POV Scene -
The continent was splintering.
Storms rose from nothing, roads vanished under earthslides, mana pools turned to poison. Trade cities burned by accident and stayed burning by design.
Kael watched from his war room, arms folded, map torn down the center by a diagonal black scorch mark.
"West sector rail collapsed. Five towns isolated," said General Morwen, laying down a fresh report. "Crops from the riverland froze overnight. In summer."
Kael didn't look up. "Expected."
"And the capital?"
He did look up then.
The silence that followed made every man in the room still. Kael Vire had a gaze like a guillotine—cold, inevitable, final.
"They'll wait until it reaches their gates," he said. "Then ask for help. They'll call it strategy."
He turned away.
The room exhaled when he left it.
He stepped into the hall, fingers twitching from the hum of mana in the air—wrong mana, warped and grating like a song off-key.
His estate still stood. The Vire lands always stood. Fortified with ancient magic, buried relics, and centuries of paranoia.
And yet, the cracks were forming even here.
He could hear them.
In the stone.
In the wind.
In his bones.
The world was tilting toward its end.
And he was tired.
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In the privacy of his study, Kael poured a drink—amber, sharp, aged twenty years like regret.
He read through coded letters from border scouts and old allies. They all said the same thing:
Collapse. Fracture. Blame. War.
Some begged for help. Others warned him to stay out of it.
He ignored most.
Then came one letter that made him pause.
Unfamiliar crest. Poor handwriting.
The contents were ridiculous: a minor noblewoman—Clarisse Arven—politely requesting a private audience on the matter of a mutually beneficial political engagement.
Kael almost laughed.
He never laughed.
He reread the letter. There was no desperation in it. No simpering flattery. Just clinical charm and sharp practicality.
She'd attached her assets—land, title, a frankly unimpressive estate—and a list of skills, none of which impressed him.
Except one:
"I have adopted the boy known in prophetic circles as the 'Pale Blade'—Elias."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
That name had been buried in certain death records. He'd seen it linked to doomsday reports. Obscure, but disturbing.
A child? Connected to prophecy?
He didn't believe in fate. But he believed in patterns. And survival.
Maybe it was worth a meeting.
Later, as the torches outside his window flickered in green-tinged wind, Kael murmured to himself:
"Let's see what kind of woman bets her future on a fake ring and a dying world."
.
.
.
.
.
End of Kael POV Scene